Endoscopy in the medical fields allows internal structures of a patient's body to be viewed without the use of traditional, fully-invasive surgery. Endoscopy is widely used to perform many types minimally-invasive medical procedures, such as arthroscopy, laparoscopy, gastroscopy, colonoscopy, etc. A basic tool of endoscopy is the endoscope (“scope”), which contains a set of optics through which internal features of a patient's body can be viewed (typically, with the aid of a special-purpose video camera attached to the endoscope and an appropriate video monitor), when the endoscope is partially inserted into the patient's body.
A supporting device commonly used in certain forms of endoscopy is an insulator. An insufflator is an electromechanical device which pumps sterile gas, typically carbon dioxide, into the body of the patient in the region where the scope is inserted. The purpose is to create more space within the body cavity for the surgeon to see anatomical features and manipulate his instruments. An insulator is commonly used in laparoscopy, for example.
The primary component(s) in a insufflator is/are one or more pressure regulators (connected in series if there is more than one) to regulate the pressure level of the gas.
During endoscopic surgery, the pressure within the body occasionally and momentarily may be greater than at the output of the insulator at a particular instant in time. When this happens, gas and/or or biocontamination (e.g., body fluid) can travel back through the external gas conduit toward the insulator (“backflow”). If biocontamination reaches the insufflator, contamination of the insulator can occur, which necessitates a delay in the procedure, possibly putting the patient at greater risk and, at the very least, complicating cleaning and sterilization of the equipment. With conventional insufflators, there is no easy way to determine whether backflow contains biocontamination or merely sterile gas, other than by visual inspection. Visual inspection, however, can be difficult and inaccurate. Some systems use a humidity detector to detect indirectly the possible presence of backflow; however, that is not a very accurate detection method, at least because it cannot directly detect the presence of biocontamination. Among other reasons, a humidity detector cannot reliably detect the presence of biological particulate matter independently of body fluid. There may be other reasons why it may be undesirable to base the detection of biocontamination or backflow on humidity.
In addition, biocontamination can be present in the gas supply that is input to the insulator. Known conventional insufflators, however, have no way of detecting this mode of biocontamination.